Anyway, it was a huge huge tug and definitely a "Re-Learning." This is all information I knew before. I just am relearning it.

Its funny, cause that's how i feel also... and these little things mentioned in life will just pop from fiction, and stand out against the rest of everything.. And i will take more it to heart, like when someone reminds you of an old memory you forgot. I found the media helpful for this, and I was OBSESSED with witches for ages. I knew these movies or books and etc were make belief... but there were images or lines that made me twinge with nostalgia.

I was christian because that's what i was, and as a kid it meant no more to me than the pair of pants i wore to school - much less in fact, i recall. So i went to church when my mom went to church, and i sat and stood with everyone else and listened to the monotonous rhythms passively and i sang along and hated that i couldn't hear myself but to this day i can't remember the words it was all detached noise.

I never really understood the call to Christianity until recently, so never understood the power of true belief or understanding to be connected with religion! religion was just what you were, to me as a kid, like a last name it said what label, like a street or neighborhood, your family fell under.

For a while in early elementary school i started to tell people i was a witch, and told them all about what witchcraft was and WASN'T. This was squashed quickly after my friends stopped hanging out with me, and one told me it was because i was poisonous and going to hell. So i admitted my lie and said i just study them (witches)!!! But all of those lessons and descriptions were all made up in my head.

Imagine my dismay when my family got the Internet and i found this whole religion relating to the very things i was making up a few years earlier. I quickly traded Christianity for another religion, Wicca... which soon after i gave up in search of that truth and wholeness which didn't exist for me in learning what i don't feel but does exist in learning what i do feel. I labeled myself as having my own religion, now i say I'm finding it.

Here, here! I'll toast to that. Our religions are still largely persecuted, but we are no longer burned, stoned to death, or hung in many regions! Many of us are safe, and that's something to toast to.

Crazy Healer LadyHealth and happiness to you!

The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness. -CWG

Good for you, Happy Soup! I'm looking into converting to Wicca as well, but I don't think I'm ready because I'm still connected to Xtianity somehow. My church experiences weren't so negative. I was always happy and my Baptist faith always expresses the love of Jesus and how a powerful influence he is in our lives. We don't really focus on the dominanating part of Jesus. God, I LOVE JESUS. But I also love the Goddess..

So, good for you with finding your true path!

Religion is like going to McDonald's. Why should I be enemies with you because you choose to walk and I choose to drive?

I was raised christian and eventually went to presbyterian. I think my transition to paganism really started when I was young. I would always love to take walks in the woods near our house, would be able to walk right up to deer and other animals. I had an extremely close connection to nature.

When I started going to church with our neighbors I was too young to understand what God was.

When I continued to go throughout junior high.. well I started seeing things in a different light. How woman were portrayed in the Bible really upset me. Not to mention how many times the thing has been rewritten. I just found so many inconsistancies that it really bothered me. I began looking for something different when I was 12. And now ten years later... I'm a Wiccan Priestess. I just couldn't understand why all the bad things in my life were happening... they just do. There's no God up there saying you must suffer. The Gods to me are mothers and fathers. Hell if I scraped my knee when I was growing up my mom cleaned it and told me to be more careful.. she didn't tell me I scraped my knee because God wanted me to.

Paganism was a way that explained the world to me. Things happen because they do, they are experiences to teach us, not because some God said, "You've been naughty, you must suffer for your naughtiness."